Saudi beef with Qatar may not be about terrorism …

Saudi Arabia and Israel have been cooperating seriously since at least 2013.

The Saudis cut off Qatar just days after demanding it stop funding Hamas.

Hurting Hamas helps Israel the most.

According to CNBC, …it’s perfectly accurate to say the stunning rift between Saudi Arabia and Qatar is all about Iran as the Saudis have become obsessed with stemming Iran’s growing power and influence in the Middle East.

But digging a little deeper, it also looks a lot like the singling out of the Qataris at this specific moment has something to do with another country entirely: Israel.

Perhaps there are still some casual followers of Middle East politics who have missed the many reports over the last year or so that have announced the growing evidence of Saudi-Israeli cooperation on security issues. This is mostly the result of the Iran nuclear deal pushed by the Obama administration. Because that nuclear deal happened in what felt like slow motion, Israel and Saudi Arabia had time to plan their response and organize several best- and worst-case scenarios. The Times of London in 2013 first reported the news of serious Israeli-Saudi cooperation that even included a deal to allow the Israelis to use Saudi airspace to launch an attack on Iranian nuclear sites.

How does Israel figure in this decision by the Saudis to cut off Qatar? It’s the logical conclusion after the Saudis said in an explanation of the move to isolate Qatar that they feel Qatar is supporting terrorist causes and is becoming too much in league with Iran.

Qatar openly supports Hamas, which regularly carries out terror attacks on Israelis and Jews – both in Israel and in other nations and territories.

But in the days leading up to the announcement of the Saudi-Qatari diplomatic freeze, reports began surfacing in the Israeli and Arab press that Riyadh was pushing Qatar to end its relationship with Hamas. And the Saudis are well aware that if Qatar cuts off Hamas, Hamas probably wouldn’t survive.

Qatar’s refusal to do so immediately may have been the last straw for the Saudis who have been emboldened to at least appear to step up their anti-terror efforts after President Donald Trump’s visit to Riyadh last month. And the Saudis are also more emboldened to threaten Iran and any of Tehran’s pet causes now that the Trump team has made it abundantly clear that it approves the growing Arab state coalition against the Iranians.

And President Trump’s trip couldn’t have been more of a public endorsement of the growing cooperation between the Saudis and the Israelis too. Note that Saudi Arabia and Israel were his only two stops on his Middle East trip, even though Egypt remains the largest Arab recipient of U.S. aid and its population positively dwarfs Saudi Arabia’s. President Trump believes, along with many others, that Saudi Arabia is calling the shots in the Sunni Arab world now and he wants its work with Israel to continue.

And thus, Saudi Arabia’s decision to pressure Qatar on its support for Hamas coming so soon after the Trump visit doesn’t seem like a coincidence. Hamas has one real enemy, and that’s Israel. So Saudi efforts to freeze Qatari terror funding for Hamas has only one real beneficiary — Israel.

Critics who point out that the Saudis have been direct and indirect backers of different terrorist groups in the region have a right to be a little cautious about celebrating this news as some sort of sign of a true turning point. President Trump speculated as much in a tweet Tuesday, and frankly he seems to be getting ahead of himself here:

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump’s Washington hotel received roughly $270,000 in payments linked to Saudi Arabia as part of a lobbying campaign by the Gulf kingdom against controversial terrorism legislation last year. (source)

Gaza (along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem) is occupied Palestinian territory under international law, determined by the vast majority of the world, as well as the highest court in the world, the UN’s International Court of Justice. Gaza cannot commit aggression against Israel, since Israel is in constant and continual commission of illegal aggression against Palestine by occupying it (illegally and sadistically blockading it and frequently committing terrorism against its civilians, including by targeting them with chemical weapons provided by US taxpayers – see “Rain of Fire” by Human Rights Watch). As documented by Amnesty Int’l, Human Rights Watch, and many others,

But, even ignoring international law and that Gaza is under illegal Israeli occupation, Gaza did not initiate this current round of violence; Israel did:

Western/US/Israeli propaganda says the violence started with the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli youths on June 12th. That is a lie:

On May 20th, the Israeli government murdered 2 unarmed Palestinian teens, one on video, and wounded a third.

The firing of pathetic scrap metal rockets from impoverished Gaza, which have killed no one, were in fact launched in response to earlier Israeli bombings, killings, assassinations, and arrests of Palestinians, including children.

Since the year 2000, Israel has killed 1,500 Palestinian children, while Palestinians have killed 132 Israeli children. That means Israel has killed over 1,000% percent more Palestinian children than vice versa.

According to a landmark, comprehensive study of all of Israel’s wars, by Zeev Maoz, Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis, former head of the Graduate School of Government and Policy and of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, and former academic director of the M.A. Program at the Israeli Defense Forces’ National Defense College:

“. most of the wars in which Israel was involved were the result of deliberate Israeli aggressive design . None of these wars – with the possible exception of the 1948 War of independence – was what Israel refers to as Milhemet Ein Berah (war of necessity). They were all wars of choice . ” – Defending the Holy Land, pg. 35, (bold added)

“I review a number of peace-related opportunities ranging from the Zionist-Hashemite collusion in 1947 through the collapse of the Oslo Process in 2000. In all those cases I find that Israeli decision makers – who had been willing to embark upon bold and daring military adventures – were extremely reluctant to make even the smallest concessions for peace . I also find in many cases Israel was engaged in systematic violations of agreements and tacit understandings between itself and its neighbors.” – Defending the Holy Land, pg. 40

Israel has violated more UN resolutions than any other country. That includes Iraq under Hussein.

Hamas is the government elected by Gaza in elections that Jimmy Carter (and many others) observed and said were completely fair and free. Israel constantly says Hamas uses human shields. But in Israel’s biggest massacre of Gaza, the one in 2009, all the human rights organizations, including Amnesty, HRW, and the jurist Richard Goldstone, found that Hamas DID NOT use human shields. On the contrary, Israel used human shields, which is a regular practice for Israel. Israel uses civilians as human shields.

“The Mission received allegations that in two areas in north Gaza Israeli troops used Palestinian men as human shields… The Mission found the foregoing witnesses to be credible and reliable. It has no reason to doubt the veracity of their accounts and found that the different stories serve to support the allegation that Palestinians were used as human shields.”

Noam Chomsky: “Hamas is regularly described as ‘Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.’ One will be hard put to find something like ‘democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus’—blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable.”

In the history of all rocket and mortar fire into Israel, 26 people, total, have been killed. And remember, Palestine breaks ceasefires far less often than Israel, as documented above.

This number of 26 is in contrast to the minimum number of 1,400 people who were murdered by Israel in a single one of its terrorist atrocities, the 2009 Gaza Massacre.

Noting that in the current massacre, zero Israelis and over 100 Palestinians have thus far been killed, and noting that Gaza is a concentration camp – Israel allows no one to enter or leave –Dan Sanchez gives a perfect description of the disparity in arms between the US/Israeli war machine and Palestinian scrap metal projectiles: “They [the Gazans] are like fish in a barrel, being blasted by a shotgun from above. It’s like some of the fish in the barrel pathetically spitting water at the gunman, and [US media calls] that a “shooting battle.”

The rhetoric and tactics of Hamas and other groups resisting Israeli occupation and colonization can be brutal (though far less so than Israel). Propagandists try to attribute this to anti-Semitism, to distract from the fact that these groups are resisting having their country stolen and their people dispossessed and annihilated. Native American resistance to European colonizers was sometimes extremely brutal, as was their rhetoric, but everyone universally recognizes that this was not because of “anti-White-ism”, or “anti-European-ism”, but because they were having their land stolen and their people massacred, the same thing that Israel is doing to the Palestinians.

Palestinians have the right under international law to resist occupation, ethnic cleansing, colonization, aggression, and annexation. Miko Peled, son of an Israeli general, recently statedthat if Israel doesn’t Like rockets, they should decolonize Palestine. Dr. Norman Finkelsteinnotes that “The Palestinians have the right to use arms to resist an occupation . However, the fact that morally and legally they have that right doesn’t mean that it’s the most prudent strategy. In my opinion, a national Palestinian leadership committed to mobilizing nonviolent resistance can defeat the Israeli occupation if those of us living abroad lend support to it.”

In 1948, the people who wanted to form a Jewish state carried out a massiveterror and ethnic cleansing campaign against the occupants of Palestine, expelling about half of them (750,000) from their land and into concentrated areas (Gaza and West Bank). Israel has slowly continued colonizing even those areas, which were specifically reserved by the UN for Palestinians. Israel takes all the best land and resources, such as water. Here is a visualization of what has happened, and is currently happening with massive support from Obama:

Israeli settlement building in Palestine is a war crime under international law. Under Obama, Israeli settlement building is up over 130%.

For about 40 years, there has been an international consensus that Israel must stop colonizing territory outside its 1967 borders. The consensus has been blocked by the United States, in isolation from the international community (much like the USA’s isolated, strong support for South African Apartheid). Every year there is a UN vote on the issue, and every year it goes about 165 to 2, the world against the US and Israel. This continues under Obama. All human rights groups support the consensus, as does Hamas, the Arab League, Iran, the Organization of the Islamic Conference… Virtually everyone, except the US and Israel. (More details on this page.)

Palestinians are brutalized, repressed and impoverished by Israel. To get a quick visual understanding of the difference between Gaza and Israel, take a look at the images of people and cities being wantonly pummeled by Israeli terrorism when you search the word “Gaza“, and the images of opulence, wealth and luxury that come up when you search “Tel Aviv“.

Israel, whose government intentionally targets, tortures, and murders civilians, including children, including with chemical weapons, and whose government uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, and whose government is the last entity on Earth carrying out old-style ethnic cleansing and colonization of foreign countries, is the single biggest recipient of US aid, at over three billion dollars a year and huge amounts of lethal weaponry such as attack helicopters and white phosphorous chemical explosives.

To reiterate, Obama requested more military aid for Israel than any president ever. This is not because Obama and the USA love Jewish people. Obama was recently an accomplice in a literal neo-Nazi-led coup d’etat in Ukraine, and is currently fully supporting the junta-integrated Ukrainian government, which is staffed with several neo-Nazis in high ministries, and which uses neo-Nazi paramilitaries to carry out massacres (and possibly genocide) against people resistant to the junta. The actual reason the US supports Israel is discussed below.

As Amnesty International has noted, all aid to Israel is illegal under international (and US) law, because Israel is a consistent violator of human rights.

Amnesty International also noted that Israel’s 2009 massacre of Gaza would not have been possible without the illegal funding (money and weapons) and support Israel gets from the USA.

This is also true of the current massacre Israel is committing in Gaza.

However, in a way, that is good news.

That means US citizens can STOP the massacres.

If we stop our money and weapons-flow to Israel, which is illegal anyway, we stop Israeli terrorism! All we have to do is stop committing a crime, and we will stop more crimes! That’s great news.

Here is a previous example of how this has worked: When the USA cut its funding for Indonesia’s genocide against East Timor, which the USA was funding almost exclusively, Indonesia was forced to stop and withdraw. All it took was cutting off our illegal flow of money and weapons to the criminals.

The same thing would happen if we cut our illegal funding for Israel’s genocides and acts of terrorism, ethnic cleansing, colonization, and annexation against Palestine.

But since the USA is an anti-democratic country, the only way to stop US plutocrats from using our money to fund Israeli terrorism is to force it through massive, non-violent pressure.

One way it happens is when it becomes too politically costly for the plutocracy to keep funding genocide and terror, meaning the costs of their illegal support outweigh the benefits, as in Indonesia. In that case, massive publicity and indigenous resistance accomplished the goal.

But Israel is the USA’s main imperial – and nuclear – base for controlling the Middle East, which US planners, in 1945, called the greatest material prize in world history, due to the oil and gas. Thus, it might require more, as in non-violently making our country into a democracy so that people control their own institutions and money, and thus the way we operate as a society and interact with the world.

Last note: To be clear, Israel is a legal state, but only within the borders allotted to it by the United Nations – the Pre-1967 borders, which existed before Israel started eating away, through terror, ethnic cleansing, colonization, and annexation, at the areas reserved by the United Nations for Palestinians, as well as areas of other countries, such as Syria (the Golan Heights).

Per international law, US domestic law, and common sense, Israel doesn’t deserve any support until it abandons isolationism and accepts that it can’t steal other people’s countries, and stops blockading and withdraws its soldiers and settlers, all there illegally, from those countries.

Israel is, militarily, the most powerful country in the Middle East, by far. Removing our support for the Israeli government (which we are legally required to do) will not put Israelis in danger. It will pressure the Israeli government to stop doing what endangers Israelis, which is committing aggressive acts against Israel’s neighbors.

If Israel ends its status as a consistent violator of human rights, decolonizes Palestine, and respects its neighbors, it could be a pleasure – and legal – to work with and support Israel.

Germany, Japan, and South Africa went from being the most reviled countries on Earth to being some of the most admired. Maybe Israel could undergo the same transformation, but not unless we, US citizens, help by ceasing to enable Israeli terrorism and war crimes by illegally supporting them.

Western mediarenewed its campaign of demonization in summer 2014 against Hamas, the Sunni Islamic organization that leads the Palestinian government in Gaza. This was presumably because Hamas was behind the kidnapping of threeIsraeli teenagerswho were later discovered to have been murdered. Later, more substantial information came out to prove that the accusation was wrong, and the ISIS-linked Dawlat al-Islam Sunni militant organization claimed responsibility for the murders.

In a situation of belligerence by a superior force such as Israel, what should a people do whose backs have already been pushed against a wall?

In the case of the Palestinians in Gaza, Hamas provides the resistance muscle to repulse the Israeli onslaught, which can qualify as having a genocidal agenda. A more engaging way to look at the issue is to think of an economically disadvantaged and militarily weak hypothetical country in the same situation.

What could its people do if the mighty army of a powerful nation should spearhead an attack of similar magnitude against them? To demonize Hamas while it tries to repel the more superior military forces of Israel is to say that Palestinians have no right to defend themselves while they are being slaughtered.

TheZionistmovement’s claim that Palestine was originally Israel is a distortion of history.

On the basis of Biblical records, Israel, meaning “he who struggles with God,” became Jacob’s name after he struggled with God in a place that Jacob later called “Peniel” or “Penuel.” Israel started out as a family, then became a clan and tribe, and later a nation composed of 12 tribes, but the tribe of Levi was dispersed in all of the tribes with the responsibility of priesthood. Moses belonged to the tribe of Levi, which was not one of the 12 tribes. After Israel conquered Canaan, where it later grew to become a kingdom, the first king was Saul; he was succeeded by David and then by Solomon.

Towards the end of the “glorious Solomonic era,” the united kingdom of Israel crumbled and became divided into two: the northern kingdom became known as Israel, and the southern kingdom as Judah.

The northern kingdom was soon overrun by Assyria and dissolved. The southern kingdom was conquered by Babylonia (current-day Iraq) and fell into ruins. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia took the Jews, i.e. the people of Judah, into captivity.

Later, the Persians (current-day Iran) liberated the Jews from Babylonia and allowed them to return to Judah, but by then, Judah was no longer called Israel. The Persians were defeated by the Greeks, and the Greeks by the Romans.

Under the Roman Empire, part of the area that is presently called Israel became known as Judea, which was a province of the larger Roman region of Syro-Palestina.

It is reasonable to view Hamas’ violent actions as a necessary defensive reaction to the violence that has been perpetrated by Israel against Palestine since 1948. The seeds for this violence were planted three decades earlier by the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917: a deal made between pro-ZionistJewish banker Walter Rothschild and the United Kingdom, which then controlled Palestine.

According to this deal with the UK, which was on the brink of bankruptcy from World War I, instead of collecting the debt, BaronRothschildobtained a guarantee of the UK’s support in creating a Jewish State in Palestine, to be called Israel. This became possible in 1948 partly because of the overall sense of guilt worldwide that succeeded the Jewish holocaust of World War II.

The bitter politics of the Palestine-Israel conflict did not start in an instant. There was a long build-up. People in the so-calledChristian western worldhave ignored (and generally tend to ignore) the past and ongoing oppression of the Palestinians because westerners are beholden to a badly interpreted theological formulation, on top of a confused view, that entangles the Jewish religion with Zionism.

Zionism is a non-inclusive and dehumanizing fascist movement that hides behind the cloak of the Jewish religion.

Nobody aims to destroy Judaism. No honest-to-goodness Palestinian would want to destroy equally honest-to-goodness Jews. If the Palestinians, or any nation for that matter, would aim to destroy Judaism, I would be on the side of Judaism’s defense.

I have nothing against the Jewish people, to whom I am related through my own wife, who is Jewish. Nevertheless, I am absolutely againstZionism.

Palestinians have every reason in the world to counter a movement that has tried to rob them, not only of their geographical location but also of their future and the very essence of their dignity as human beings.

Before the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine, it was a progressive country where Palestinian Muslims, Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Christians had largely lived in peace, harmony and cooperation for many centuries.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization’s historical leader Yasser Arafat, a Muslim, was married to a Palestinian Christian. If there was a geographical area in the world where Muslims, Jews and Christians lived harmoniously together, it was in Palestine.

The actions that were instigated by the Zionist movement in Europe, sponsored largely by individuals such as the Rothschilds, encouraged and financed a massive migration of Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe and the United States to colonize Palestine and settle more and more territories in a continuous effort to deny Palestinian Muslims their legitimate right to their native lands.

People of Ashkenazi descentconstitute around 50 percent of Israeli Jews, even though the native Jewish population in Palestine was almost entirely Sephardic before 1948.

Eastern European and American Jews (also mainly Ashkenazi) newcomers to Palestine quickly played a dominant role in politics, the economy and the media.

For about two decades after the creation of Israel, a strong cultural conflict took place between its Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities.

Palestine has been a “Holy Land” for 2,000 years for Jews, Christians and Muslims. Holy lands should be sanctuaries where peace, tolerance and respect for others are absolute requirements.

The exclusion implied by the notions of “promise land” and “chosen people” have interrupted the peace.

These were never meant to be understood literally. Jerusalem should be true to its name, as “the city of peace.”

On August 4, 2014 the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) released what they claimed to be scans of a captured Hamas combat manual which explains the benefits of human shields (Captured Hamas Combat Manual Explains Benefits of Human Shields). This juicy story got quite a few people excited, and within 2 days their blog post had over 81,000 likes on Facebook.

It turns out though, that the documents that they uploaded were forgeries, and sloppy forgeries at that. The work was so shoddy that you don’t even have to be an expert to see the mistake.

Let’s take a a look.

Alright, so the IDF uploaded these two tiny, low res images. One of them is 452 pixels wide and 280 pixels tall and the other is 437 pixels wide and 475 pixels tall.

[UPDATE August 8th] After reading some of the comments I realized that I shouldn’t have taken for granted that people would understand how to properly assess the alignment of a font. To clarify, I have uploaded the PSD file that I used to measure the position of the fonts. It is important to make sure that you are measuring from theBASELINE of the font (see image below), and that you distinguish between the font baseline and aliasing (partially faded pixelation) that occurs on the curves. Now it’s important to note that if one mistakenly assesses the baseline by including the aliasing you may end up with a pixel of difference between the two sides, (someone who knows nothing about fonts may include a descender or a loop, but this would be an extreme error), however even a one or two pixel difference from a poor measurement would NOT account for the amount of distortion that would occur if this text was really siting on a curved page.

Also, Sometime after I uploaded this video the IDF uploaded a new version of the file. I don’t know what time this happened, but when I checked on August 8th the cover image was darker and no longer matches the hash of the original image. I’m not sure why this alteration was made, but since I cannot predict what alterations they will make in the future I am linking to the original here on a backup server. You can reference the modified version they uploaded here (uploading this for reference in case they change it back).

(You can download these images directly from the IDF website directly by clicking the images above.) Just in case the IDF decides to take these images down or alter them we’ve uploaded backup copies to several locations, and if the IDF decides to take down or alter the post, you can find a cached version of the page locked in here.

Now if a conspiracy theorist uploaded two tiny low res images like this and called them evidence, they would be mocked, but this is Israel, so we’ll have to do a proper debunking.

First I want you to look at this image of the supposed cover and take note of something important. This is supposed to be a scan of a real piece of paper, and this paper has been folded, has staples in it, and is slightly bent on the right hand side. Also note that the fold in on the right hand side is significant enough to cause a coloration change which indicates a difference in height.

What does this all mean?

The paper in this image was NOT flat when it was scanned. That’s important, you’ll see why in a moment.

Now if you had real text that was printed onto a piece of paper and you introduce a slight curve to that paper, then the text will have a slight curve as well. But in this image, the text not doesn’t curve. It’s 100% straight even as it passes over the fold. In fact the lines are straight on all of the text here, all the way down to the single pixel level. To demonstrate this I have overlaid a set of vector based lines that are perfectly straight, intersected by a perpendicular line at a perfect 90 degree angle. Here we can zoom in and see that they line up precisely down to the pixel, all the way across the page, from left to right.

NOTE: It’s much more clear if you download this image yourself and zoom in completely. There you will see that it is no exaggeration when we say that the text lines up to the pixel even across the curve. By the way there’s another anomaly in this image which I didn’t mention here. See if you can spot it.

And it’s not just one line of text that pulls off this magical feat. All of this text here on the top right does this, and all of this text is on the exact same grid. All perfectly parallel to each other. Even this decorative line here is perfectly straight as it passes over the fold. Down to the pixel.

Hasbara war room

“Hasbara,” literally “explaining,” is the term used in Israel for government propaganda aimed at overseas audiences.

“The goal is to deliver a very clear message to people abroad – Israel has the right to defend itself,” Lidor Bar David told Ynet.

Bar David, a student, and one of the organizers of the “war room,” adds, “We want people abroad who don’t know our reality to understand exactly what is going on here.”

(Update: In a 15 July report, which also links to this post, The New York Times notes that previously “Bar David was a captain in the Israel Defense Forces, serving in the office of the military spokesman’s unit.”)

At least 168 Palestinians have been killed since Israel massively escalated its attack on Gaza on 7 July (as of July 23, the Palestinian death toll reaches 678, GR Editor). Eighty percent of the fatalities are civilians, according to the United Nations.

Thirty-six Palestinian children have been killed and more than 1,200 people have been injured. Thousands are fleeing homes fearing escalating Israeli attacks which have so far destroyed or severely damaged 940 homes, as well as numerous mosques, schools, businesses and charities.

A video accompanying the Ynet report shows rows of students beavering away at computers in a hall with a sign on its door saying “Advocacy Room” in English. In Hebrew, it says “Hasbara war room.”

“Organized lying”

Last year a “covert” Israeli government initiative came to light which planned to pay students for spreading propaganda online.

“The whole point of such efforts is to look like they are unofficial, just every day people chatting online,” Israel expert Dena Shunra told The Electronic Intifada.

“But in fact, these are campaigns of organized lying, orchestrated with government-approved talking points and crowdsourced volunteers and stipend recipients,” Shunra added.

According to Ynet, “The war room was opened in the afternoon of the first day of Operation Protective Edge,” one week ago, by the IDC Herzliya student union, and currently has more than 400 volunteers active in it, all students at the institution.

The IDC Herzliya “war room,” seen in a screenshot from Ynet video, is a continuation of earlier propaganda efforts.

Working in 30 languages, the students working this comment far target online forums including so called “anti-Israel” pages on Facebook and comments sections of online media.

Tomer Amsalem, a second-year year psychology student, acts as one of the war room’s graphic designers.

“In one of our graphics we show the treatment that members of [Hamas leader] Ismail Haniyeh’s and Abu Mazen’s [Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas] families received in Israel, to show we’re even humanitarian to the families of the Palestinian leaders,” he told Ynet.

“In another graphic we show the trauma of the children living around Gaza, which is expressed in drawings of Qassams [rockets]. Another example is a series of cities around the world, being attacked. For example, Berlin – we wrote in German ‘What would you do?’ with a background of Berlin being attacked,’” Amsalem added.

Amsalem is quoted as saying that he sees his work in the “war room” as a civilian equivalent to being called up for military reserves.

Inbal Deutsch, another psychology student who moved to Israel four years ago, responds to comments. She focuses on misattributed photos – photos occasionally circulated online that show scenes that are either not current or not from Gaza. Israel propagandists likely hope that by debunking such pictures they can sow doubt about all too common real pictures of atrocities currently being committed in Gaza.

Focus on Facebook

Students working the “Hasbara war room” at IDC Herzliya, seen in a screenshot from a Ynet video, see their role as a civilian equivalent of military service.

Yarden Ben Yosef, chair of the IDC student union, is described as the person who initiated the war room.

“Yesterday we managed to pull down a whole Facebook page that incited against Israel and called for the killing of Jews,” Ben Yosef claimed.

“It had 120,000 followers and Facebook took it down after a lot of activity on our part,” Ben Yosef said.

If true, that is in marked contrast to Facebook’s total inaction, despite complaints, to control the pervasive, raging incitement to racism and violence by Israelis on Facebook who support the slaughter of Palestinians.

Student role in government propaganda

Bar David is quoted as saying that “the war room was founded as a continuation from Operation Pillar of Cloud,” Israel’s November 2012 assault on Gaza that killed more than 170 people, again overwhelmingly civilians.

Palestinian boy sits on the rubble of a destroyed building following an Israeli air strike earlier today. Air strikes killed at least seven people in Gaza, including five members of the same family, an emergency services spokesman said.

The video emerged on Monday. It appears to show a man searching for his family amid the rubble of Gaza, apparently during a ceasefire. He is shot by a sniper. For a while he lies there, moving awkwardly. Then he is shot again.

The component parts of the sniper rifle may have been made in the UK. After Israel’s 2009 incursion into Gaza – Operation Cast Lead – the Commons committee on strategic export controls found British arms exports “almost certainly” were used in the attack, in direct contravention of the UK’s policy that arms exports should not be used in the occupied territories.

WARNING GRAPHIC:Israeli sniper killing wounded civilian

The military equipment sold to Israel includes parts for sniper rifles and small-arms ammunition, ground-based radar, military aircraft engines and navigation equipment, military communications and unmanned drones. Britain also supplied components for cockpit displays in US F-16 combat aircraft sold to Israel, engine assemblies for their US Apache helicopters, armoured personnel carriers and components for the guns and radar in Israeli Sa’ar-class corvettes.

Then-foreign secretary David Miliband told the Commons all future arms-related applications would be assessed “taking into account the recent conflict”. After all, it is against Department for Business rules for an export licence to be granted where there is a clear risk they might be used to “provoke or prolong conflict within a country” or “be used aggressively against another country”. Either criteria, depending on how you choose to look at it, could be applied to the Gaza crisis.

Britain even revoked a handful of licenses, all related to parts for an Israeli navy gunboat known as the Saar 4.5 Class Corvette, which was likely used to shell Gaza.

‘Israel and the Palestinian territories’ is the biggest recipient of approved export licences from the Foreign Office’s list of 27 countries of human rights concerns. They are worth £7.8 billion to the UK, towering over China’s £1.5 billion or Saudi Arabia’s £1.8 billion. Of that £7.8 billion, just £5,539 goes to the Occupied Territories.

The number seems massive, especially given Britain is responsible for just one per cent of Israel’s military imports (most come from the US). The vast majority of the figure is irrelevant. It’s made up of a single licence approval for “equipment employing cryptography and software for equipment employing cryptography” – phone masts, basically. Put that to one side and you have what experts believe to be about £10 million in military contracts.

Here is what the money goes on, according to the Commons committee:

“All-wheel drive vehicles with ballistic protection; body armour, components for body armour, military helmets, components for pistols, components for body armour, components for all-wheel drive vehicles with ballistic protection, components for assault rifles, components for pistols, components for equipment employing cryptography, components for military communications equipment, cryptographic software, equipment employing cryptography, software for equipment employing cryptography, software for the use of equipment employing cryptography, general military vehicle components, military support vehicles, small arms ammunition, weapon sights, military communications equipment and components for small arms ammunition.”

But Britain’s military relationship with Israel is not one-sided. It is based on cooperation, on British firms working with Israeli firms, in an entanglement which precludes a critical political response to the savage attack on Gaza.

Take the Watchkeeper combat drone, built in the UK by UAV Tactical Systems, which was set up by Israeli company Elbit Systems and French company Thales. Elbit’s 51% stake tells you where the balance of power is. UAV Engines, which builds the rotary engine, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Elbit.

In 2007, the Ministry of Defence ordered 54 Watchkeepers at a cost of £800 million. They came in late, of course, but the Watchkeeper system will be in service until 2040.

Israeli company Rafael and the Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) were also present. Rafael announced it was in negotiations to add to its 15-year deal with the Ministry of Defence so it could supply its fighter jets with new targeting pod systems.

Several British firms provide Israel with spare parts for the F16 and Apache fighter jets and naval ships. These were the machines used to kill hundreds of civilians in Lebanon. Human rights groups estimate that they have killed 223 Palestinians during the current offensive in Gaza, 46 of them children, 26 of them women and 14 of them elderly.

Yesterday, David Cameron urged a “proportionate” response from the Israelis, but he placed the blame overwhelmingly on Hamas. As a father his heart bled when he saw images of children being killed on beaches with Israeli munitions, he said. But “this can be most quickly brought to an end” by Hamas ceasing to fire rockets.

There were gasps in the Commons from the Labour benches. “These attacks are not just disproportionate,” Peter Hain said. “In any other conflict they’d be described as war crimes.”

That is precisely what they are, as any reasoned, impartial observer would conclude. But even if Cameron were such an observer he would be hamstrung by a military-industrial networkwhich entangles British and American firms and state military departments in decades-long, multi-million pound contracts.

These military deals do not exist in isolation. They discourage any attempt by the British government to condemn Israel’s operation with the sort of language which it deserves.

Britain profits from Israel’s horrible little wars. And Israel can conduct its horrible little wars because Britain’s desire for profit trumps its commitment to human rights.

Regardless of whether one is still stuck in a false belief system of supporting war crimes by that Zionist government of Israel against the Palestinian people, does it not make you wonder why we are actually hearing much truth, previously hidden or lied about, on the US State-Run MSM news?

What are your thoughts on this ….why do you think that the MSM news is giving out truthful information that exposes their Zionist owner’s war crimes?

Below is an interview from Christiane Amanpour, a Zionist agent, on the Palestinian-American teenager, Tariq Khdeir, who was brutally beaten by Israeli police. Why would this mole talking head be giving out truthful information that could expose her master’s deception?

A Palestinian-American teenager whose savage beating by Israeli police helped set off the current crisis described his shocking ordeal in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday.

“They kicked me in the face. They kneed me in the face. They punched me in the face,” Tariq Khdeir said. “They were beating me like they had no – they didn’t know what they were doing. Why would they be beating me like that?”

Amateur video of Khdeir’s beating went viral and caused widespread outrage; Israeli authorities say they have suspended one of the police officers involved in the case.

Khdeir was born and grew up in the United States; he was in the West Bank visiting family when three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and found dead in the West Bank.

Khdeir’s cousin, Mohammed Abu Khedair, was murdered in what was largely seen as a retaliatory attack for the Israelis’ death.

“I asked if he needed anything from the bakery,” he told Amanpour. “And he said sure, and I went to the bakery and I bought him some things.”

“And I came back and I found the cop car there. And then the cops told me … ‘You can’t get closer to the scene.’ And Mohammed wasn’t there.” – see more of this CNN interview here:

Once again, the Ukraine crisis is the top story. President Obama is threatening Russian President Putin with international sanctions if he does not back off in Ukraine. Russia is countering threats of sanctions with threats of sanctions of their own. Russia may also demand payment for its oil and natural gas in gold. Dr. Jim Willie brought this up this week on USAWatchdog.com. It’s not just the U.S., but the European Union is also leaning towards sanctions, and it appears Germany is on board. This comes at a time when both the U.S. and EU are facing continued bad economic news. Just this week, it was reported that wholesale inventories for things like autos rose and sales plunged. Not a good time to start an economic war. Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry issued an ultimatum to Russia about the annexation of Crimea. The deadline is Monday. Only one catch, looks like the voters there are going to overwhelmingly pass a referendum to join Russia this weekend. The U.S. and EU say they will not recognize the vote as legit. Russia is also amassing troops on the Ukrainian border. Russia already has 25,000 troops in Crimea. They have been there because it has a naval base there. The new Ukrainian interim Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, has asked for weapons from the West; but so far, his request has been denied, at least publicly. The new Ukrainian interim PM has also said, “We fight for our sovereignty and we will never surrender.” I am very worried that neither the West or Russia are going to back down, and we will have War. Don’t kid yourself, this could eventually turn into a nuclear war, and where does it stop? The Obama Administration must know the danger. Do they actually want war?

I did not want to cover this but I am because image of the President is very important. This latest “spoof interview” with comedic actor Zach Galifianakis called “Between the Ferns” did not help his image. On one hand, the President is doing some goofy interview to pitch a failed health plan. On the other hand, the President is warning Putin to “back off.” This all happened this week.

It is heating back up again between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Hamas fired dozens of rockets into Israel, and Israel responded with air strikes against what it calls “terror” positions. There had been a cease-fire until this week. Now, sources claim the cease-fire is back on. How long this cease-fire will last is anybody’s guess.

With the talk of war and rumors of war along with possible sanctions between the West and Russia, is there any wonder why the stock market plunged 230 points on Thursday? Inflation is back in the picture, and even the mainstream media is talking about it now, so you know it’s bad. My friend, Gregory Mannarino of TradersChoice.net, says look out below if you are a stock investor. The market is going lower from here. As far as inflation, Mannarino says forget about inflation, the real story is the dollar and it is deflating. Yes, the deflation in the U.S. dollar will cause more inflation for you and me. Mannarino says watch the value of the dollar. It is sinking and will continue to do so.

Dianne Feinstein, who is in charge of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is upset the CIA spied on her committee. I say, now she knows how we feel! She says the CIA illegally went into Senate computers to remove documents about torture allegations in the post 9/11 world. The CIA says the Senate did not have authorization to have the documents. What? The people overseeing the CIA need permission to have documents for oversight? Really? Over in the House of Representatives, Darrell Issa says what the CIA did amounts to treason. Feinstein says what the CIA did was unconstitutional and violates “Separation of Powers.” CIA Director John Brennan has denied doing anything wrong. I guess some folks in Congress finally see how out of control the spy agencies have gotten. This goes well beyond protecting the country from terrorists. Thank you, Edward Snowden.

Finally, the GOP won a Congressional seat in Florida this week in a special election. Let me tell you why this is an ominous sign for Democrats. I have been telling you the Democrats are going to get blistered in November. Now, even ultra-left wing commentator Chris Matthews agrees with me that the Democrats will lose the Senate this fall. I used to live in Pinellas County, which is a county in the Tampa Bay area. Tampa Bay is what is called a test market. Why? It has a very diverse population. You could call it a microcosm of America. The Democrats out-spent the Republican candidate, David Jolly, by 2 to 1. If the Republican prevailed in this race, can you see how the rest of America might vote come November?

Join Greg Hunter as he analyzes these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up.

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About A Sheep No More

A Sheep No More is no longer plugged into the Matrix like the many sheep who are still programmed to believe that they have correct information provided by a varied and “independent media.” In fact the media is owned by 5 or 6 mega-media companies run by corporate advertising executives and Washington.